Basketball is a very popular sport—however, scoring a basket e.g., shooting a basketball through a basketball rim, requires practice to perfect. In order to practice scoring a basket, a player usually needs a basketball court on which to practice. However, a basketball court is quite large and is not easily accommodated in many locations where a player would like to practice shooting baskets.
In those locations where it is impractical or impossible to have a full-sized basketball court, various systems exist that enable a user to simulate scoring a basketball. One such system is the type used in bars or amusement halls. This system employs a rim at a predetermined distance, e.g., typically about ten feet, from a player. The user pays a fee, such as via a coin or bill slot or the like, and tries to score as many baskets as possible in a predetermined amount of time. After each shot is taken, the balls are returned to the player by a sloped or angled floor or netting located under the basket that directs the balls, after being shot, back within the reach of the player. While entertaining, this system is inadequate for practicing shooting a real basketball because the balls and the rim employed in this system are smaller than the regulation-size balls and rims used in a real basketball game. Thus, the entertainment system does not provide a user with an accurate simulation of shooting a real basketball.
In addition, the sloped or angled floors used in such a system to return the balls to the player render this system inadequate for practicing shooting real basketballs. In a real basketball game, the floor of the basketball court is level, and thus a player is accustomed to seeing the rim positioned at the same height relative to the floor regardless of the player's position on the court or the player's distance from the rim. In the conventional basketball system that employs sloped or angled floors to return the basketballs to the player, the floor of the system rises closer to the rim as a player's shot distance increases, thereby impeding the player's shot perception.